One Accountant. One Blog.

On Home Repairs

As a home owner I approach home repairs with a mixture of both dread and excitement. The excitement comes when my wife lets me call a qualified repairman to repair whatever needs to be repaired. The dread, when I call in a repairman when she has explicitly told me not to.

It’s not that I can’t fix things around the house it’s just that I can’t fix them right the first, second or third (a charm my… nevermind) time. What my wife doesn’t seem to understand is that in the time that it takes me to complete a repair, what with driving to Home Depot 353 times to get the right part, the 3.25 hours of required whining and of course the approximately 982 straight hours of yelling at inanimate objects, I could instead be sitting on the couch, scratching or sitting on the couch. My wife,of course, doesn’t understand this because she is intelligent.

In addition to being intelligent she is also more adept at home repairs than I am which lead me to wonder why. After much research I was able to determine that I should just ask her:

Me: Why?
Wife: Why what?
Me: Aha!

Beaming from my deductive prowess I almost missed hearing my wife’s home-repair distress yell. For those of you who may question whether I can truly tell the difference between my wife’s various yells I have only one word for you: 13 years (maybe that’s more than one word but I was never good with numbers). If there is one thing I’ve learned after being married for 13 years it’s never forget to put the toilet seat down. Additionally, I’ve learned to tell the different levels of urgency related to my wife’s yells: the more voluminous scream means there is a spider in the house while a meek utterance such as, uh-oh, means that she has nearly cut her finger off while opening my new set of Ginsu-Ninja knives which I needed in order to cut many aluminum cans in half (true story – both the finger and the aluminum cans).

As I was saying, my wife let loose with her home repair yell prompting me to rush to the phone to call a repairman. However, before I could even dial the first number I fell victim to my wife’s DIY glare which is felt more than seen. Dropping the phone in resignation I made my way into the kitchen where the yell and glare originated and saw the source of the problem: the kitchen faucet wouldn’t turn off. Thinking to myself, not for the first time, that this would be any easy fix I turned the water off to the faucet and then sat down on the couch glowing with pride that due to my quick-thinking and ingenuity all was well in our household again. This, of course, did not last as my wife, with her aforementioned intelligence, explained that we (meaning I) would have to replace the faucet:

Wife: You know you need to replace the faucet right?
Me: Of course!
Wife: Why are you just sitting there then?
Me: Of course!
Wife: (DIY glare in full effect – nothing needs to be said)
Me: (jumping from the couch) I think I pulled a muscle!

After 353 trips to Home Depot to get a kitchen faucet, 3.25 hours of whining and 982 hours of yelling at inanimate objects I believe I taught my sons an important lesson: always put the toilet seat down.

Thanks Shannon! I’m looking forward to finding out what lesson I’ll learn in the next 13 years (my guess is it will have something to do with replacing empty toilet paper rolls – another important thing I can pass on to the boys).